This application is a National Stage application of International Application No. PCT/JP2008/056798, filed Apr. 4, 2008, the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference as if fully set forth herein. This application also claims the benefit under 35. U.S.C. §119, of Japan Patent Application No. 2007-100842, filed Apr. 6, 2007.
The present invention relates to a technology for generating a program for performing operations on behalf of users. More particularly, the present invention relates to a technology for generating a program for performing operations with respect to a web browser on behalf of users.
In recent years, the concept of mashup has attracted attention, which is for generating a new service by combining services provided by web servers. Mashups may be implemented when an application programming interface (API) for calling up various programs that run in the web servers have been open to public view. Insofar as an API is open to public view, a programmer may create a program for calling up various APIs in free order or under a free condition, so as to create a new service by combining services that have been already available.
Patent Document 1 will be described later.
[Patent Document 1]    Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2004-272871
[Non-Patent Document 1]    “Usage of Selenium Recorder”, homepage uniform resource locator (URL):    “http://seleniumrecorder.mozdev.org/index-ja.html” searched on Apr. 2, 2007
APIs for implementing mashups, however, are on public view simply on a trial basis by some web servers, and a programmer may not be able to combine services available on the Internet freely. Further, even when APIs are on public view, it will be difficult to create a new program unless there are some level of skilled programmers, and it is impossible for general users to create such a program easily.
Meanwhile, a variety of services have been provided on web pages in recent years, and users utilize such services in various ways. Therefore, there may be a possibility that even general users may improve their convenience by combining a plurality of services to create a new service. For instance, if general users may easily create a program enabled to acquire information on stock prices from web pages providing such information, automatically determining a limit price for ordering stocks based on the stock prices, and automatically ordering stocks for the limit price on a web page of a securities firm, the convenience will be improved remarkably for users.